Chapter 1: Uluru

The sun beat down on Tom as soon as he stepped out of his air-conditioned workplace.

Tom sighed, sucked in the moisture-laden hot air and felt his shirt begin to dampen with sweat as he walked. He honestly wondered where his life was going. It was only a week after his twenty-sixth birthday, and he didn’t feel as if he had achieved much of note.

He had a dead-end job, a prick for a boss and his female friends were just that, friends. In the three years that he had worked as an analyst and programmer for the Police Force, he had stacked an extra six kilos onto his 188cm frame, losing some of the athletic looks that he’d had.

Despite completing two degrees in four years and doing a year of basic training to be a Police Officer, unless he underwent further training or changed to active duty, he was going no-where.

Squinting into the mid-afternoon summer sun, Tom tromped to the corner and then had to wait to cross the two roads to get to the other side of the street. He walked the 70m up the road to his bus stop. He felt a bus pass him and then heard it hit the brakes just as he neared the bus stop.

Without much thought, Tom stepped into the bus, after the rear doors whooshed open beside him. He stopped long enough to flash his ‘Go-Card’ at the device to pay for his trip. The bloody thing wouldn’t register, so he pulled the card out of his wallet and tried again to no avail.

‘Great, just bloody great,’ he fumed. The card was out of cash. In consternation, he tucked the old card into a side pouch of his backpack. He looked in his wallet again and fished out his new Go-Card.

He’d had to purchase the new card the week before when he had thought he’d lost the old card, only to find the old card on his desk at work. ‘Yah’, it worked. He slipped the card and the wallet into his back pocket.

Seeing that the seat across from the doors was empty, he went to sit in it. He flipped off his backpack, and then he flopped into the corner by the window. He set his bag down beside him and then closed his eyes, as tiredness from a long, frustrating week seeped over him.

Relaxing into the corner, as best as one can on a hard bus seat, he smiled to himself as the thought of going on a holiday surfaced into his consciousness. He’d had to work over the Christmas break, and he was beat. To be honest, he wasn’t even sure where he wanted to go.

‘Maybe out west to Uluru,’ he thought. ‘I’ve never been there.’

In reality, Tom just wanted to go somewhere that wasn’t the noisy, smelly, bloody city that he now lived in. He wished he had the money to afford it, but his current commitments just wouldn’t stretch that far.

He was close to paying off his modest unit in Teneriffe, and he didn’t wish to dip into his Trust Fund. Perhaps once he had paid off the unit, he could splurge and go on a holiday. He had been penny-pinching for a while now.

Lost in his daydream, it took some time before his brain connected with two things that were out of place. One was that the bus was incredibly quiet. The second was that it should have stopped at the next stop by now.

Perplexed, Tom opened his eyes and glanced around the interior of the bus. It took several moments to realise that he was it. Not one of the other smelly, ragged seats had a butt plastered to it. The bus should have been crowded with people just like him, who were simply wishing to get home to enjoy the weekend after a long day at work.

Tom glanced out of the window and then stopped and stared. This time, the shock that there wasn’t one building in view took even longer to register. He should have been going down Commercial Road in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane, not travelling across an open plain.

The scene that met his eyes was of a red landscape covered in spinifex, rocky outcrops, gnarled eucalyptus trees and small dusty bushes. He had to blink several times for it to make any sense to him at all.

Alarmed, Tom got up, grabbed his backpack, and navigated down the isle of the swaying bus to get to the bus driver. Before he quite got there, he started saying, “Mate, where the bloody hell are we?”

Tom had to grip the overhead rail as the bus suddenly pulled to a screeching halt. The grinning, partially rock encrusted, and ghoulish-looking face shocked him even worse. The ghoul replied in a deep gravelly voice, “You wished for adventure, so, your wish has been granted.”

“When you have had enough fun return to the big tree at the crossroads and hold up your ‘Go-Card’. If you lose it, you’re stuck here, so guard it with your life. Just remember that if it feels wrong to do something, then it probably is. The consequences will be on you. Have fun. Don’t forget to flash your card and watch the step.”

The doors slid open, and Tom found himself flashing his card before he stepped out of the bus.

Tom bent over and coughed and spluttered as the red dust stirred up from the disappearing bus, swirled around him.

It took him several tries to clear his lungs and wipe the gritty, red tears from his eyes so that he could see again. He’d had to pull the front-right tail of his white shirt out of his black dress pants to wipe his eyes. He was disgusted to see the smear of his red- dust tears that were now decorating his crumpled shirt.

“That’s going to be hell to get out,” Tom grumbled aloud as he pulled the rest of his shirt free of his belted pants.

Pissed, Tom started to look around and then turned so that he could determine exactly where he was. He estimated that the poor excuse of a road ran mostly east-west if it was still late afternoon and not early in the morning.